Mainly Norfolk: English
Folk and Other Good Music

Lay Down Your Weary Tune

[Bob Dylan]

Steeleye Span Mk. 2—Martin Carthy, Maddy Prior, Peter Knight,
Tim Hart and Ashley Hutchings—sang Bob Dylan's ballad a cappella
on a BBC “Folk on 1” on 17 October 1970.
Together with the tunes
College Grove / Silver Spear,
this recording found its way into the Ashley Hutchings collection
The Guv'nor Vol 1
and in 2006 on the bonus CD of the 2006 reissue of
Please to See the King.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune was also sung by Fairport Convention on
their first ever BBC session recorded on 24 November 1967 and broadcast
on John Peel's “Top Gear” programme on 10 December 1967.
This recording was finally made available in 2002 on the 4CD box
Fairport unConventioNal.

Music critics have described this song variously as Dylan’s first
‘withdrawal’ song, his shift from politics to mysticism,
and as a work dedicated to his musical muse. Dylan himself tells that he wrote
this song in a style similar to that of a Scottish ballad.
Either way, the idea of music as a musician’s solace, a net in which to land
softly, is familiar; and the idea of landscape as a grand orchestra of sound
is wonderful.